


Colour

by livesybaby



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, Fantasy AU, Happy Ending, M/M, Soulmates AU, TW Robert gets shot, TW reference to Gordons Abuse/Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 03:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livesybaby/pseuds/livesybaby
Summary: Au where you experience life in black and white until you meet your soulmate and then everything is in colour for the first time.-TW: Roberts shooting, Implied reference to Gordons abuse.





	Colour

I’d spent more than two decades in a black and white world before he came along. They say that when true love enters your life the colours start to bleed and you’re met with a landscape so beautiful that it’s like nothing you’ve ever dreamed of. Of course I’d mostly expected true love to come with vibrant curves and long flowing hair, Bambi eyes and a heart-shaped mouth. I had been the first in our little picturesque village to find my sweetheart in a different light; a diamond-cut jawline, strong arms, broad chest and an ecstasy-inducing scent that screamed masculinity. His name was Robert and he was _everything._

I’d known he was here before he stepped foot in the pub that day, knew I loved him before I met him if that were even possible. I’d woken up in my usual dual-coloured daze only by lunchtime to be met with a blast of sepia muddying the lighter shades. Mum hadn’t experienced it with my Dad, sure it was a decent relationship for the most part but that particular spark, that colour hadn’t been there for either of them and Dad died without seeing anything but black and white for his entire existence. Mum said the first time she witnessed shades of blue was the exact nanosecond that I entered the world. Dad had never seen the colour of my eyes, not like Mum did - instead he tainted my aura with his darkness while staring deep into blackened irises. 

I didn’t see colour on the day my Dad died, but the ink-like surface of my darkest hours suddenly became a light wash of grey as the clouds lifted and I could see a future for the first time. The day that Robert arrived was a unique wash on my canvas, I’d spent the week before fighting through the most intense of headaches and the light had been sparking fires in the depths of my vision. I woke up on _that day_ with a clear head and an open heart. By the time I settled down for lunch in the family pub everything had turned sepia and for fear of letting my imagination run away with me I’d kept my new senses to myself. It was when he’d strolled through the doorway that I knew, he’d locked eyes with me within seconds as the spectrum began to take over. He felt it too, our lives had been transformed forever. 

The colour was dull at first, so washed out and muted that it was barely visible but I knew it was there, he knew it was there - and so did my Mum who smiled over at me in recognition, telling me later that the tinge of pink in my cheeks had first given me away, shortly followed by the look of awe as I analysed my changing surroundings. The first time we’d spoken had been surreal, his voice like velvet and every word slipping off his tongue like butter and warming the inflammation in my heart. There is a positive side to having your Soul-mate just enter your life and being able to pinpoint exactly who they are. It means you don’t have the awkward dating phase of is he/she the right person? What If I don’t like this? What if, what if, what if? 

We skipped that and went straight into just _knowing_. I remember being sat on my bed listening to him read aloud a chapter in his new book, something we did often, and just feeling _complete_ like, this is happiness and I found it, he walked into my life and we just knew. The first time we slept together was the tipping point, the colours were brighter now and the green-blue palette of his eyes were _gorgeous_ , I bore into them as he pushed me further over the edge until the sensitivity took over and I squeezed my eyes shut, drawing out a tremendous sound which he echoed back at me. We opened our eyes to glorious colour that was so vibrant we shut our eyes for a moment to adjust. Peeked through my lashes as the colour seeped in I watched as Robert did the same, gasping as he flitted his eyes around the room before landing back on me and smiling so hard that nothing else in the world came close to the happiness we both shared. 

Love. True love. Soul-mates. Eternity. 

It was as though my eyes and heart had been opened up, transformed into this all-seeing power of vision, like a third-eye seeing wonders that the rest of the world couldn’t conjure up in their wildest imaginations. I was sharing it with him, the only person that mattered, the only person I could ever, would ever love from the depths of my heart. The day we got married was beautiful, the scenery around us was like a fairytale, the sky was a vibrant blue contrasting with the greenery that surrounded us. We had flowers and ribbons and all of the things I’d pushed aside before as boring or unimportant because they hadn’t given me that spark of joy, but now with their striking pinks and yellows and purples I couldn’t get enough. I wanted all the colour that Robert brought to my life.   
Just like the day he walked into my life I had known about the accident before anyone arrived at our door. The bang had echoed through the usually quiet village and it could have been mistaken for a car backfiring or even a firework but it brought darkness with it that only I could see. My vision turned static and began to flicker like a broken television, the colours leaking as the darkness set in - greys and browns desaturating the garish pinks of the wallpaper Robert had chosen last Summer. I had raced out into the village only to be met with my Uncle skidding down the driveway, the crunch of gravel as he dragged me out into Main Street to be met with a scene so dark and despairing that I felt the bile rise in my throat. Mum was shaking, hyperventilating and people were screaming, crowds forming in the road around a darkness on the floor. _Robert._

I’d slammed down onto my knees in a desperate attempt to help, his skin ghostly white and the only pigment being the rich crimson that was flooding from his chest. My hands were covered as I tried to stem the flow, only letting myself be shoved out of the way when the paramedics arrived, a wailing blue siren breaking through the monotones. The walls of the hospital were white as was everything in the room, I sat next to his bed in dull tones for thirteen days before the monitor changed pattern. Then came the twitch of his fingers and the movement beneath his eyelids, he was waking up. The exact moment he cracked his eyes open and I caught sight of his green-blue orbs I was washed over with relief and colour. The muted tones started to leak back in and as he squeezed my hand the vibrancy began to saturate our world again. _Alive._

Recovery had been difficult, his lungs would never regain full capacity so on colder days I had the displeasure of being one of the only people to witness the blue tinge to his lips. We never found out who pulled the trigger and why but Robert had suspected it to be his brothers doing and I hadn’t doubted him for a second. By the time we were approaching the one year anniversary of his ordeal his Brother and his Wife had moved away from the village. Roberts aura grew lighter that day. 

The talk of family had been a strong point in our conversations before the shooting and by the time Christmas came around we were actively seeking out adoption agencies and surrogates. Finding a willing female to carry our potential child had been a long process but actually getting pregnant was harder than we had imagined. It took over a year for a positive result and by then we were beginning to give up hope but the world worked in mysterious ways and a shock result at the twelve week scan showed that the womb held two babies, twins, we would be fathering twins. 

Nine months later we sat in the nursery watching our children sleep, our son with a mess of blonde hair and a scattering of freckles across his nose, our daughter - the lighter of the two birth-weights with her darker hair, looking more and more like me everyday. The sleepless nights were bearable, harder than we’d ever imagined but bearable just to see the happy, content faces of our children the next morning. I remembered my Mums story of how I’d brought the first ounce of colour into her life and I could believe it, the hue had changed since our two were born and I knew Robert saw it too. The lights of our lives lay in matching yellow sleep-suits as we curled up on the sofa together. 

I couldn’t imagine living in a world without colour now, stuck in a nightmare of ebony and ivory while colour lay just out of reach. All it needed was the touch of true love to explode into a rainbow spectrum that was so blinding and euphoric, along with the colour came warmth and love into my heart and I swear it grew in size every time I caught a glimpse of my husband and children. 

_They brought colour into my life._


End file.
